Oxygen
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: "Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure." - Oprah Winfrey. / 12 unrelated moments where they learn when to hold on and when to let go.
1. (kiss me)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer: I'm an explorer and a browser, apparently. xoxo Safari**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Kiss Me (Ed Sheeran) / Ginny&Colin" ; Potter Games Competition "Round Two: Romance" ; Quelf Competition "Green: Angst" ; Off The Block Competition "Breastroke: Medium" ; Disney Character Competition "Lord Milori" ; Oh the Thinks You Can Think Competition "Lorax" ; Gemstone Competition "garnet"

21 March 2014. Word Count: 1,076

**Strangely, though, flying feels a bit like falling in love.**

* * *

**Kiss Me**

[-]

**i.**_ I've fallen for your eyes but they don't know me yet._

The first thing she notices about Colin Creevey is his camera. It's carefully looped around his neck by a slightly frayed black grosgrain ribbon which is the very same string that's tethering him to reality. The camera has the breakable look of a Muggle invention, but oddly it looks like the most stable thing about this boy who dreams of escaping gravity.

He wears his camera as if it were a piece of battle armour. The Nikon completely covers his ribcage and the heart that beats inside of it. Ginny wonders what sort of nightmare this eleven-year-old boy could possibly be protecting himself from. She tries to look into his eyes and catch a glimpse of his evanescent soul, but it's like he knows she's searching for the truth, for he chooses that same exact moment to lift his camera to his face and shield himself from her curious gaze.

The lens of the camera creates an impenetrable glass wall between the two of them. For a moment their lives had intersected, but now they are spinning away, two separate arrangements of atoms and molecules that could have collided but for some reason did not.

**ii. **_I'll be your safety._

They're Sorted into the same House but Ginny and Colin do not interact or talk to each other as much as they do with the other Gryffindor First Years. He's terrified that she'll find out his secret and she's too busy confiding in a diary that's eating her soul alive. However, when they're slowly but surely estranged from their fellow peers after the suspicious circumstances of the Chamber of Secrets and Triwizard Tournament ordeals, - Colin is a cheerful mess whose sunniness is borderline radioactive; Ginny is a vacant clouded wisp whose moments of clarity are as unpredictable as a double rainbow - they team up and find solace in the other.

It's a slow quiet friendship between two strangers who suddenly find out that they're not really strangers at all.

By the glowing light of midnight fire, she teaches him how to write and express the poetry that's tattooed onto his soul. With her hand wrapped around his, she gently coaxes the words out of his shy heart. He becomes more confident and starts to spend less time with his head in the clouds. Whenever Ginny allows him to, he takes an endless amount of photographs of her. Some are poses while others are candid still-sh0ts; either way, his pictures of her are his best work by far. Nothing about her is forced: not her expressions, not the sound of her laugh, not the accidental _I love you_ that slips out of her lips when he wrestles away the shadows of trauma-induced depression that try to suffocate her beautiful mind.

More often than not, they are the last ones to leave the Common Room after they've spent hours coexisting. Colin tells her he wants to be an astrophotographer after he graduates Hogwarts. His eyes light up brighter than Polaris when he shares his dreams with her, and suddenly when they stargaze, Ginny sees their future through a telescope where all their wishes come true and they stay together forever.

They're cuddled together on one of the plushy Gryffindor sofas, heart to heart and eye to eye. His camera is still noosed around his neck and presses into her chest, but now it's she who is guarding his heart for safe-keeping. He holds her close in his arms a little too tight as if any moment she would get up and leave him all alone. What he doesn't know is that Ginny is magnetised into his orbit by the very same force of gravity he is trying to defy.

Colin wants to fly and free himself from his binds to Earth. He's the universe expressing itself as a tiny human soul for a few moments. Strangely, though, flying feels a bit like falling in love.

**iii. **_Kiss me like you wanna be loved._

She never gets the chance to ask him what he's been running away from all of this time. Their world abruptly explodes into a warzone and the enchanted castle they reside in becomes more of a prison than a safehouse.

Ginny has been Harry's for these past two years but she hasn't forgotten about Colin or the whispered promises they'd made to each other. Her tender heart remembers the ache of being in love with an oblivious best friend. She's running through the Hogwarts battlefield searching for survivors when their eyes meet. It is familiar hazel and chocolate irises, bloodied skin and bruised bones, freckles and stardust, and poetry clashing with photography all at once. She rushes towards him like he is her Sun and she is Venus.

"Colin," she says in relief as she throws her arms around him and presses her lips to his neck right above where his camera strap is cutting into the skin near his carotid artery. "Colin, Colin, Colin."

But she's made an unfortunately grave mistake by turning her back on the fight. A masked eater of death sees a window of opportunity and raises his spindly wand, pointing it straight at Ginny's unprotected side. Colin had lost his own wand earlier in a Disarming duel; he has nothing to protect her with besides his life. He shifts and subtly places himself between her and the Death Eater so Ginny is not aware of his final decision to sacrifice himself in order to spare her.

"Do me a favour?" he asks with what could very well be his last breath.

"Anything," she says. "Anything, for you."

"Kiss me . . . kiss me like you wanted to be loved from the very start. Take a freeze frame before it all falls apart," he softly recites his final line of poetry. Colin lifts his camera up and over his head and hands it to her. Ginny leans in to fulfil his request, her lips brushing against the constellation of freckles dusting his cheekbones. She wishes she were brave enough to kiss him on the mouth like she really wants to. She's in the process of lifting the Nikon camera to her face when the fatal green spell hits his now vulnerable heart.

The lens of the camera creates a fragile glass wall between the two of them. For a moment their lives had intersected, but now they are spinning away, two separate arrangements of atoms and molecules that've collided a little too hard and then refracted, unintentionally leaving fragments of themselves with the other.

A little too late, when Dennis reads Colin's much-too-short eulogy at his funeral, Ginny finds out that Colin had been trying to run away from love.

[-]


	2. (ain't gonna lose you)

**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: The stream-of-consciousness writing style is intentional.  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Ain't Gonna Lose You (Brett Dennen) / Cho&Cedric" ; Page 394 Quote Challenge "45. My stomach began to burn and churn inside." ; Disney Character Competition "Prince Phillip" ; Oh The Thinks You Can Think Competition "Horton 2.0" ; Elemental Song Quotes Challenge "DARKNESS: _Too dark for forgiveness_. -Disturbed, _The Curse_" ; Poetry Quotes Bootcamp "16. I smiled at you because I thought that you/Were someone else - _Mistaken_, Vikram Seth" ; Book Thief Challenge "5. Even death has a heart." ; Delirium Challenge "10"

6 April 2014. Word Count: 1,631

**A single choice. One memory. Sixty seconds. And then I'll never remember anything about this life ever again.**

* * *

**Ain't Gonna Lose You**

[-]

**i. ** _I ain't gonna lose you_.

If you could only keep a single memory, which one would it be?

Would it be your first broom ride? The day you learnt you were magical? Or would it be a haptic memory, something concrete that you have to physically touch to recall? Would it be a once-in-a-lifetime experience like your first night living away from home or would it be something as mundane as what you were thinking about while you brushed your teeth this morning? Would your memory be a person's face or a name or a street number? Would it be a memory of someone influential in your life? Or would you even dare to pick a memory that will help you remember yourself?

What if I said you only had sixty seconds to pick? What would you do, then?

**ii. **_Throw me in a hurricane.  
_

Every single love story has an ending. Faerie tales have us believing that every girl is a princess destined for princely true love and a happily ever after. Grecian-Roman mythology and Romantic era classics proclaim that love only ends in tragic death and broken promises. Moral of the story is, humans obviously need love to survive and yet they die for it as well. Love is the deadliest of all deadly things: it kills you both when you have it and when you don't.

Hogwarts is not a castle out of a faerie tale. Witches and wizards are all villains in disguise, and people are nothing at all like they are portrayed as in the storybooks. There is an established hierarchy in place - kingly snakes, knightly lions, lordly eagles, and peasant badgers - and I have to wonder what did my House ever do to become so inferior? We don't mind being pleasant peasants (fighting to reign over the castle is so petty and pointless) but as a result, Hufflepuff is largely ignored by most of the student population. It wouldn't be such a problem except I have found a Ravenclaw princess, and there is no way to win her affections if she does not even know I exist.

You're so oblivious to reality as you daydream and draw in that sketch pad you're always holding. When we play Quidditch, I can tell that your head is in the clouds and that you want to fly higher in the atmosphere and never come back down onto the ground. You're a Seeker, but it's not the Snitch your eyes are searching for. There's something _more_ you want from life, and despite my best intentions, I cannot figure out what it is.

I know about the perils of love and the death that awaits those who are not immune to its guile. It's obvious that love is the last thing on your mind. But you see, love doesn't care whether you want to be infected by it or not. It sneaks up on you like a tumorous growth and blossoms into something that poisons your heart and veins. And though I try to prevent myself from falling victim to it, my demise is inevitable and I need for you to catch me.

Problem is, you don't even know who I am. I have to resort to drastic measure and do something utterly un-Hufflepuff in order to capture your attention, but my shy introverted House has no idea how to cure a lovesick fool. Then, one day in Seventh Year, the solution hits me like an electric shock to my brain. Before I can change my mind, I enter my name into the Goblet of Fire.

Suddenly, I am a Hogwarts champion-in-the-making as I slay dragons for you. I pretend that I am brave and courageous, and my new assertively confident personality definitely catches your attention. When I smile at you in the hallways, you no longer wrongly assume that I am smiling at someone else. You retain your wistful independence, though, and although it is endearing it is also frustrating.

"I'm not a damsel in distress," you tell me with flinty black eyes during our very first fight. "I don't need to be saved."

You're right, of course, (you always are) but _I love you_ and don't you realise that? The very next day you're practically drowning at the bottom of a black, endless lake. Don't you see that I _have_ to save you? You're my princess and I am determined to be your prince (because isn't that what you want?).

You're the most important thing to me, Cho. I can't stand the thought of another man, so I ask you to be mine before you agree to be Potter's. You're the belle of the ball that winter night. I wish we could stay in that moment for forever.

"Don't go," you tell me as I stand in front of the labyrinth's outer hedge. You hold me tightly and serenade my cheeks and lips with butterfly kisses. "Please don't go in there, Cedric. Who cares about the tournament or winning? It doesn't look safe in there at all. Please, Ced, just stay."

"I'll come back to you," I promise. I've come too far in the tournament to drop out now. "There's nothing to worry about."

You close your eyes in resignation and give me one last kiss. "I love you." You slip away into the crowd, wiping your glassy eyes and not hearing my response.

"I love you, more."

**iii. **_I ain't gonna lose you.__  
_

The graveyard is too dark for forgiveness. The ominous shadows twist with sins of the dead. Before I can comprehend why we're in a graveyard or what the hell is going on, a raspy voice murmurs: _kill the spare_. There's a blinding flash of painless green, and then I am falling for eternity. I can feel myself slip away into nothingness despite my desperate attempts to salvage my soul. Strangely, though, I stop falling and am frozen and suspended in time for a single moment.

I guess even death has a heart. Instead of erasing my soul completely, it is allowing me one last act of free will. A single choice. One memory. Sixty seconds. And then I'll never remember anything about this life ever again.

I quickly comb through my memories. Happiness and melancholy all blend together in a muddied watercolour painting of emotion. Firsts and lasts; beginnings and ends; promises and betrayals . . . they all become senseless and unimportant like they're snippets from a stranger's life and not my own.

(In fifty-four seconds, the name Cedric Diggory will mean nothing to me.)

My stomach begins to burn and churn inside as the countdown continues. Potter stares at me with wide, frightened eyes but he's stuck in the world of the living and I am in this strange place of in-between. There's nothing he can do or could have done to save my life. I am the spare, the expendable and replaceable pawn. He is a valiant Gryffindor knight fighting against the king of snakes. I was never meant to be the one who survived tonight.

(Forty-two seconds left to make my final decision.)

I wonder if prisoners in Azkaban have to make this choice when they receive their Kiss from the Dementors. Do they struggle to pick out their happiest memory to ward off the guards? Do they pick one memory to carry with them into the afterlife as well?

(Thirty-nine...thirty-eight...)

There is one memory out of the many that I decide I want to keep. It's not the first time I flew or learnt that I was a wizard. It's not my shower-time philosophical contemplations of life. But, it is a person's face and a name all at once. It's about a girl who has been the centre axis of my life for the past four years and who helps me remember myself.

The memory is of you.

(Twenty-five...) It's obsidian hair and pyrite eyes. It's stolen shadowy moments preserved in charcoal dust.

(Twenty...) It's steamy espresso kisses and mocha hugs. It's silk and satin and mink and suede.

(Seventeen...) It's sunshine lighting you from the inside-out and embers glowing in your veins. It's the hummingbird thrum of your heartbeat and the sharp talons of your tongue and the feather wings sprouting from your shoulder-blades because you always wanted to fly away from here -

(Twelve...) - And it's the first time I said _I love you_ and the first time you said it back and the first time we both ever meant it. It's promises of forever and _I swear I won't go_ and _you and me, always_ and you accusing me of being a liar but I swore I wasn't and you were right all along, of course you were -

(Ten...) - And it's your name, a sad butterfly trapped in a sea of loneliness; and it's your face, the prettiest princess in the whole wide world; and how stupid were we to pretend that I could fit anywhere in your life when there's not even enough room for you to breathe without suffocating from the world's expectations -

(Nine.._._) It's regret that my father isn't the one who is the last person on my mind but it's also relief that _you _are the most important person in my life.

(Eight...) It's love, so much love, I'm burning and shivering with love and I don't ever want to stop feeling like this.

(Seven...) I sincerely hope you move on with your life and find someone who can make you happy again.

(Six...) It's all of these memory fragments bundled up into a single name.

(Five...four...three...two...one...) Cho.

I furiously etch your face into the grooves of my memory as the delayed deathly green light unfreezes and rips through my world. My time is up.

(Zero.) _I ain't gonna lose you_.

[-]


	3. (golden slumbers)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer: Second Wizarding War!AU.  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Golden Slumbers (The Beatles) / George&Angelina" ; Off The Block Competition "Breaststroke: Extra Hard" ; Disney Character Competition "Simba" ; Oh the Thinks You Can Think Competition "Cindy Lou-Who" ; Book Thief Challenge "17. But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgement of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?"

For Kaylee (Zellarest) for the Hugs and Happiness Challenge.

Breaststroke quote: "All the courage within me will light a flame, I won't run anymore." - Hatsune Miku, Black*Rock Shooter

6 April 2014. Word Count: 1,644

**"I wouldn't have made it this far without you, you know. We're the best team ever."**

* * *

**Golden Slumbers  
**

[-]

**i.**_ Once, there was a way to get back home.  
_

"George?"

"Yeah?"

"I can't do this anymore. I want to go home."

He doesn't have the heart to tell her that 'home' doesn't exist any longer. The Death Eaters blasted the Burrow to smithereens a few weeks ago, and Angelina's house was torched last night. No one has told her about the tragedy - her family was unfortunately inside of the house at the time it burnt down - because it would crush her already weakened spirit. The Light side needed Angelina to stay strong but the girl is already half-delusional and emotionally unstable from war-induced fatigue.

"Come on, Angie, just a little farther."

They're on the run - _funny how everyone seems to be 'on the run' these days_ - and have eluded the Snatchers and Death Eaters for a month now by camping out in a nondescript forest in France. The Battle of Hogwarts ended in the Dark side's favour despite Vold - _You-Know-Who's_ - death. (The damn Death Eaters still hadn't removed the Taboo of their deceased ringleader's name. Someone smart on their side had realised the Taboo was the easiest way for them to locate Aurors and Light supporters.) Everyone had thought the war would end with the Dark Lord's and Harry's death, but the Second Wizarding War was so much bigger than a petty feud between You-Know-Who and Harry. Grudges and bad blood between families as well as the oppression of all magical creatures who were not purebloods had escalated the war into something bigger and deadlier than any wizard or witch had ever imagined it would come to.

"A little farther to where?" Angelina asks, drawing George's mind back to their current predicament.

Of course he does not have a concrete answer ready for her, but he smiles encouragingly and says, "We need to put a bit more distance between us and the mountain trolls. I think I remember Fleur saying there were some caves along the seaside of this forest..." He wishes he could Apparate the two of them to a safe location, but the infiltrated Ministry is watching all wizarding transportation and Angelina is too injured to travel through Side-Along Apparation.

There's an earth-shattering bellow not too far behind them. The trees bend with the force of the sonic boom, and for a split-second, the wizard and witch have a clear view of the hordes of mountain trolls and giants that are pursuing them on Death Eater orders. Then, the trees snap back but the earth quakes as a stampede of magical creatures rush towards the two humans.

Angelina stares at George with wide, terrified eyes for a moment. Next thing he knows, she is digging in her robes for her wand, presumably to Apparate away.

"You can't!" he protests. "It's too dangerous!" George gestures to her shattered left ankle. Her injury runs a high-risk of Splinching during Apparation.

"Better to be Splinched than to be bludgeoned to death by mountain trolls and giants!"

George looks into her dirt-freckled and tear-streaked face. She's scared and panicking; he can't blame her for wanting to follow her survival instincts. "Let me," he compromises. "You're shaking so much that you'll be lucky if you land standing up instead face-planting into the dirt."

She passes over her wand without complaint. "Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up," she chants worriedly as the acrid stench of unwashed filth wafts into the clearing where they're standing out in the open.

There is another furious roar and then the stampede tramples upon the space where they were standing barely a split-second ago.

**ii. **_Sleep pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby.  
_

"You all right?" he asks her once they are tucked away safely in a crevice of rock. They had scoured the beach thoroughly without complication, but George had not wanted to risk Angelina's health any longer, and so the two of them had ducked into the first secure-looking cave they'd come upon. It was small and cramped but high enough on the shore that the high tide would not flood their hiding spot.

Angelina shivers as the salty sea spray and wind crashes against the cliffs. "Yeah," she chatters out in an unconvincing voice.

George frowns and moves away from the mouth of the cave to inspect his friend. "Are you...cold?" George asks uncertainly. It's the middle of June and the air is almost unbearably humid, yet Angelina's lips are slightly tinged blue and her skin is cold and clammy to the touch.

"I'm fine," Angelina repeats bravely. She feebly reaches out a hand to stop George from creating a fire. "No, don't. Don't risk revealing our location by creating a fire to warm me up, George."

"The Ministry already knows where we are because we Apparated," he mumbles but she doesn't seem to hear him. Angelina's head is lolled back onto the cave wall behind her. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is shallow and rattling within her ribcage. "And don't you dare die on me, Johnson," George says half-jokingly.

Her lips quirk into a sort-of smile; George can see that she is expending too much energy with that simple action. He's worried about her but there is nothing he can really do to help her out. Healing was always more of Fred's expertise, and so George never had a reason to learn that trade before now.

He settles himself beside her and conjures a blanket for the two of them. Her ankle bones had been shattered from a falling castle wall during the Battle of Hogwarts. That had been over a month ago, so there was no hope in healing her foot or re-growing the bones with Skele-Gro. George knew she had been in terrible pain their entire time rushing through the forests of France, but Angelina was brave and made no complaints. A person's priorities tend to rearrange themselves during life-or-death situations.

"Are you hungry?" George asks her.

She eyes him tiredly, a slight smirk on her face. "What kind of question is that?" Angelina retorts good-naturedly. "It's not like you can go scavenge for food around here or magick food into existence."

"Glad to know you're doing well, Angie," he laughs at her dry sarcasm. "Go to sleep, pretty girl. Get as much rest as you can."

She yawns - he tries to ignore how it morphs into a grimace of pain - and snuggles into his side. "We're not going to survive for much longer, are we?" Angelina questions rhetorically before she falls into a dreamless sleep.

George sighs and gently runs his fingers through her knotted hair. "No, I don't think so," he whispers to himself.

**iii. **_Smiles awake you when you rise.  
_

As he wakes, George immediately gets the sense that something is wrong. It's dark outside - early morning, he guesses - so they could not have been asleep for much more than two or three hours. However, in that short time period, Angelina's skin managed to burn up hotter than a supernova. Her eyes flutter restlessly underneath her eyelids and her lips are no longer blue but instead are cracked and dry from thirst.

"Angie?" he nudges her. "Angie?!" he repeats a little more firmly. "Angelina, wake up!"

She does so at a pace too slow for George's liking. Her eyes are glazed over in that way only delirious fever-afflicted people are. "Fred?" she mumbles.

"Not Fred," he whispers brokenly. "I'm George." He cradles her in his arms and holds her close to his heart. "You're going to be all right," he soothes. He blames himself that she contracted a fever from a bacterial infection in the skin of her unhealed ankle. He wishes he could adequately take care of her. "Shh, you'll be all right."

"My head hurts," she says quietly.

He kisses her forehead. "I'm sorry, Angelina. I am so sorry."

"S'not your fault." She tries to smile but her cracked lips end up splitting and a bit of blood trickles out from the raw edges. "I wouldn't have made it this far without you, you know. We're the best team ever."

"Stop, no, Angie, don't talk like that. Don't speak in the past tense or act like you're about to die." George fumbles for his wand and casts a hasty _Aguamenti_. A slight trickle of water flows from his wand tip into her mouth but it's a futile attempt to prevent the inevitable.

"I'm not afraid to die," she murmurs. "All the courage within me will light a flame when I finally face death. I won't run away from it anymore."

"Angelina..."

"Meet me on the other side?" she asks him hopefully.

"Wait for me until then," he says and kisses her flaming lips.

She smiles contentedly and lets her eyes flutter shut. Her breath slows as does her pulse, and then she's just...gone.

The Dementors come floating to the cave entrance a few hours later. George welcomes them like they are old friends. Perhaps it is cowardly of him to give up, but without her, he has no reason to keep eluding death, either. He is terribly afraid of dying because previously, he had a purpose to keep fighting for his next breath. But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgement of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?

They're about to Kiss him, and that is when George comes to his senses. He can still taste her on his lips and he does not want the Dementors to take that memory away from him. In the millisecond before one of the guards of Azkaban descends upon him, George raises his wand to his temple and casts the Killing Curse. He crumples silently to the cave floor, much to the dismay of the Dementors.

When George wakes in the afterlife, she's there, waiting for him with a radiant smile on her face.

[-]


	4. (syndicate)

**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: This one-shot is a continuation of "I Almost Do" ( story ID: 9097965 ) ; direct link on my profile.  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Syndicate (The Fray) / Ginny&Harry" ; Off the Block Competition "Butterfly: Hard" ; Book Thief Challenge "3. Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness." ; Hedley Song Challenge "Mexico" ; Disney Character Competition "Alice"

11 April 2014. Word Count: 2,818

**"I wish you were here. But you're not, you're there. And there doesn't know how lucky it is."**

* * *

**Syndicate**

[-]

i. melbourne.

Sleeping halfway around the world lies the one thing that you want. He's wrapped up in a silky white cocoon of bedsheets, stretching lazily like a cat before he wakes and emerges from his safe haven. You close your eyes wistfully and imagine just for a moment that you're there next to him.

The golden sunlight streams through the gauze curtains fluttering in the morning breeze. He has a tendency to leave the French doors in his bedroom open at night; it's a habit which frightens and irks you to no end. (_What about the robbers? Or serial killers?_ you ask him in all seriousness. He smirks back and says, _The only person recklessly stupid enough to climb up the balcony would be me just so I may re-enact Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene with you_.) He keeps the doors open because he loves the smell of inner-city London and the sounds of the city nightlife soothes his busy mind.

But it should be morning, now, and a quarter past nine. The daily rush hour at the tube stations should be lightening up, soon, and the paper should be lying neatly on the doorstep of his flat. If it's a typical Friday morning, he'll be running his hands through his inky mane as he shuffles towards the kitchen to start a kettle of hot water for tea.

If you were there with him, he would surprise you with breakfast in bed and kiss you languidly to wake you up. He'd tease you about your morning breath or your bedhead or the sort-of embarrassing secrets you may have spilled whilst sleep talking the night before. And before you can get mad at him, he'd smile angelically and say in the sweetest tone that he's just messing with you and he loves you, stinky morning breath and all.

(Aren't you glad you fell in love with such a kiss-ass charmer?)

There's a faint smile on your lips, but as the flight attendant's voice crackles through the aeroplane's intercom, your eyes flutter open. The dream-like faerie tale that had once been yours fades away into a reality where he is no longer yours.

_Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for take-off. Melbourne wishes you safe travels to Jakarta._

ii. jakarta.

You swore that when you two split, you wouldn't cry about it. You buried your feelings for him a hundred miles down deep into your heart and vowed to never think of him again.

(You were never good at keeping promises, were you?)

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness: the break-up was just what you two needed, right? You'd been emotionally invested in Harry James Potter for far too long - eradicating him from your life, mind, and heart was entirely cathartic until suddenly, it wasn't. Ironically, the separation makes you crave his love even more. The spaces in your life he had once filled are much too empty and lonely without his presence. Your heart is suffocating and turning blue from withdrawal. You need him like you need air to breathe.

Jakarta is all right, you suppose. It's uncomfortably hot and humid; definitely not at all anything like London. You attend business meetings, sit through boring conferences, and before you know it, you're back on a plane. Sometimes, work feels like a meaningless distraction from reality. He used it as an excuse to escape when life became too tough to handle. As the days pass and the number of miles that separate the two of you increase, you begin to wonder if you're running away from life, too.

iii. honolulu.

The first thing that arises in your mind when you awake is the memory of a beautiful day. It was May, and you were wearing a black cap and gown and the happiest smile. So many things were happening all at once: graduation, the official signing of your contract as a Chaser to the Holyhead Harpies, and congratulations to Mum for crying a record of six hours straight during the ceremony (all happy tears, she assured you). Oh, yeah: it was also the day Harry proposed to you.

You said no, of course. You were so very young and still scarred by the war. Perhaps you grew up faster than you should have due to Lord Voldemort; your seventeen-year-old self wasn't really interested in speeding up your life even more by getting married.

(Did you unknowingly give up on your only ticket to paradise that day?)

iv. vancouver.

Dreams are broken fragments of a fantasy that is too good to be true. You learnt this life lesson at a very young age, unfortunately. The pressure of being a professional Quidditch player at such a young age bent you until you literally broke in half. It was the fifth year of your career in the big leagues, and already your life as an athletic superstar was over because of a well-aimed Bludger hit by a Bulgarian. The resulting injury was a crippling compound fracture on your tibia.

Harry had actually taken a holiday from work to see you play in the Quidditch World Cup finals at that match. Instead of celebrating a championship win like the two of you had planned, he'd spent the night holding and consoling a bloody mess of a girl who would never fly amongst the stars again.

The rift in your relationship spread wider after that incident. Mum practically forced you to obtain a Ministry office job where you could be 'safe' and avoid another injury. You hated it there, cooped up restlessly in a claustrophobia-inducing cubicle, and snagged a business international travelling position as soon as the option became available. And so here you are, still flying all over the world but by aeroplane instead of broomstick, these days.

It's not exactly what you wanted, but you can't always get what you want. If that were the case, Harry would be yours right now.

v. san francisco.

"Ginny?"

"Hi, Mum."

"Oh, good, you actually answered the fellytone for once. I've been meaning to talk to you for a while now, but you're always so busy and I never know when I should ring..."

"Now's all right. I'm waiting at the gate since I am currently in between flights."

"That's wonderful, dear. Do you know when you're scheduled to fly back to England? It's been so long since you've had a proper meal with the family and - "

"Mum. I can't jet off to England just to have dinner with the family. Surely you understand."

"Listen to me, now: I simply thought it would be nice to catch up with you, Gin - you're always so stressed out from your travels and I was under the impression that a hot home-cooked meal would be just what you needed."

"Thank you, but - "

"You wouldn't have to worry about flight expenses at all, you know. Have you forgotten that you're a witch and are perfectly capable of Apparating or Flooing home every now and then?"

"No, but - "

"Good, then it's settled. We'll see you here in two weeks - I think the eleventh would be best. It was nice talking to you instead of your voicemail, Gin. The family and I can't wait to see you, again."

"But - " you protest one final time but she's not listening anymore.

vi. rio de janeiro.

You're so tired from jetlag and skipping timezones left and right. You close your eyes at midnight GMT time, and don't even dare to open them until you can see the morning light. Even then, it is not the sun that awakens you but instead the automated twittering from your iPhone.

You fling out an arm and blindly grope your hotel bedsheets for your mobile. Once your fingers grasp the buzzing box, you fumble to enter in the passcode so you can shut your alarm off. You breathe a relieved sigh as the noise stops and then sink back into your bed in a futile attempt to get a few more minutes of shut-eye.

_"Ginny? Baby, you there?"_

What? Your eyes fly wide open when you hear that all-too-familiar voice. Oh, Merlin, you've wanted to hear that voice all week.

_"I know you're mad at me. I don't blame you, baby. I swear, when I get back I'll do the dishes for a whole month. Hell, a whole year if it pacifies you. I'd – " _the voice is suddenly muffled and a bunch of incomprehensible rubbish filters through the connection. _"Sorry, baby," _the voice says frantically. _"I have to go in a couple seconds: the meeting got re-scheduled for earlier today. And I am so, so sorry. I wish you would say something. Call me back later – I really gotta go. Love you."_ The voice suddenly stops.

You roll over on the bed and stare at your mobile. The call log is still recording the number of minutes of our phone call he just disconnected. You suddenly have the urge to throw the piece of shit at the wall across the room. Bloody hell, who does he think he is? Waking you up, calling you, hanging up because he's got yet another meeting to attend. What a twat. You jab the Call End button on your phone and glare miserably up at the cracked plaster ceiling.

It's been four months since you called him on his birthday and tried to mend your burned bridges. You had left the ball in his court, and now after days and weeks of wasted time, he's finally mustered the courage to ring you back. Once, his half-assed attempt at an apology would have been enough to send you flying back into his arms; now, though, you're tired of giving too much love and not receiving anything in return.

(But really, what more do you expect from him?)

vii. miami.

Love is confusing. It's wanting him so much that it hurts you when he's with you and it hurts you when he's not. You sit through your meetings and conferences and nod robotically when you're expected to, but all of the business proposals float in through one ear and out the other. Your mind is too preoccupied with the peculiar monologue Harry had spoken when he'd phoned a week ago.

Yes, of course you're mad at him. You told him you loved him and he ignored you for four months. But why was he talking about dishes? The two of you aren't living together anymore. He made that clear when he'd changed his locks and never gave you a key back into his life. You are torn between wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt and wanting to scream at him until he feels the same pain that you do.

Later that night, when the darkness and shadows start to creep back into your mind, you stare out at the moon and wonder if he can see it too, and if he's thinking about you like you are thinking about him. Then you have to laugh at your wistfulness; he's another time zone where the sun is blazing brighter than a fireworks show, blinding him of any thoughts regarding you.

viii. madrid.

Nothing is permanent; how foolish you were to think that your love could have survived the trials of life.

"I wish you were here. But you're not, you're there. And there doesn't know how lucky it is. Come back," you beg on his voicemail recording message. Your eyes are bleeding tears and love as you fall apart in an aeroport bathroom. "Just please, come back." His absence is tearing you apart. Neither of you can live without the other, but your 'mutual split' is practically forcing you to.

Sometimes you wish that you had never met him. It would be so easy to be yourself if you could just let go of the love you have for him as if your love were the fuzz on a dandelion that you could just wish off into the wind, never to be seen or felt by you again.

Tacked on his bedroom wall is a world atlas. Little yellow smiley-face stickers are scattered throughout the continents, marking your travels back when he cared about you. There is no smiley-face on London, and you doubt there ever will be. Home is the one place where it is alright if you are unhappy.

It was Harry's idea to buy a roll of glow-in-the-dark smiley-face stickers. He said it was so that he could see you, even at night. Maybe it is because you're a romantic cynic, but the first thing you did when he gave you the roll of stickers was to look at how many stickers there were. He said the number didn't mean anything and that he was just trying to be prepared and have enough stickers for the map. You bit your lip, said a polite thank you, and never told him what was truly on your mind: that perhaps maybe the world was too small for one person to be travelling to eighteen hundred different destinations.

You wonder if he is still keeping up with the atlas. The last time you had stayed over at Grimmauld Place, there had been two-hundred-and-four smiley-faces glowing at you in the darkness. You miss him. He told you during his last call that he would be telephoning you today – I guess tonight, now – as soon as he got home from work. The digital numbers on your mobile click over to 12.01 - just another promise someone has failed to keep.

Daily, you have to remind yourself that relationships take time and effort to rebuild. You know that, but still, it's so easy to remember the days when loving him was painless and easy. The memory of how it used to be gives you a motive to keep fighting for a love that you don't want to forget. It helps you to soldier through the hurt even if you just want to tell him to sod off and find some other naive little girl's heart to play with.

But you can't tell him to stop. You can't tell him to let you go or bring yourself to let him go. You love him too much. Even if your heart does get stomped on in the process, it helps knowing that the bruises will heal. Eventually.

You are damned if you love him, and damned if you don't.

ix. paris.

"I love you."

"I know. I love you, too."

"I'll be home soon. Promise."

You hate promises and empty words. They are made and broken much too easily.

"We're going to be good, right? We're not going to make the same mistakes this time around, Gin. I lost you once; I won't ever lose you again."

(But you're not a princess and he's not a prince and sometimes love isn't enough. Faerie tales don't actually exist in reality or else you would have had your happily ever after with him by now.)

x. london.

He told you to wait for him. You are. Still are. He makes you feel paralysed the way your life is on pause until he returns. If he ever returns.

You try to remember the person you had been before you met him. You can't recall the girl you must have been. She's there, judging you as you look into the mirror but once you turn away from your reflection, she disappears. Sometimes you see her silhouette on the sidewalk but it is only an outline of her, nothing concrete. You wonder if she is disappointed by the person you have become. You don't think you want her to truly answer that thought. You are afraid her answer will be 'yes'.

So you stay here in this limbo, unsure of your every action and thought in his absence. He told you to wait for him so you will. You will until the day you cannot possibly wait a second longer. You are not the most patient person in the world so maybe the day will come sooner rather than later. For his sake, you hope he returns before that day comes.

The sun rises and sets; days and weeks on your calendar are getting crossed off. You eat, sleep, dream, think. And you wait. For him.

Once, your mother told you that a true princess cannot wait around all day for her prince because men have a tendency to get lost along the way and do not stop to ask for directions. You wonder if Harry, your prince, got lost on his way back to home. To you. It is entirely plausible, perhaps. Maybe today is the day you cannot possibly wait a second longer.

(You step off the plane and do not bother to look into the assembled crowd; you already know that he's not there waiting for you.)

[-]


	5. (crazy)

**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer:**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Crazy (Gnarls Barkley) / Narcissa&Sirius" ; Off the Block Competition "Butterfly: Easy" ; Tien Len Competition "Round 1: Diamonds 4 - Sirius, mistake, "Don't be ridiculous. It would never work." ; Disney Character Competition "Bambi" ; Delirium Challenge "9. He who leaps for the sky may fall, it's true. But he may also fly." ; Before I Fall Challenge "14. I heard laughter echoing and rolling all around me, swelling into a scream." ; Elemental Song Quotes Challenge "WIND: _The strong winds have shaken me inside_. -Serj Tankian, "Beatus" ; Dream Challenge "Dusk - To see the dusk of day in your dream signifies defeated hopes and a dark, gloom outlook in your endeavors." ; Hedley Song Challenge "3. Invincible - someone who thinks they cannot be knocked down"

16 April 2014. Word Count:

**He may not have loved her the way she wanted to be loved, but the small amount he did give to Narcissa was enough to satisfy her.**

* * *

**Crazy**

[-]

**i. **_There was something so pleasant about that place._

"What are we doing out here?" a seven-year-old girl giggled. Her hair was perfectly curled into shiny golden princess ringlets, she wore a new chiffon-and-tulle tutu dress in the most perfect shade of pink imaginable, and she spoke with sugar frosting on her lips and birthday wishes on her tongue but, oh, if her parents could see her now! They would hardly recognise their pretty, perfect flower as she ran amongst the cotton candy clouds and leaf-jewelled forest floor.

"Shh," the never-serious Sirius boy whispered with his lips curled up into a smile that promised such sinfully wonderful things. He moved over slightly to make room for her on his tree branch. "Come on; up you go." He held out a helping hand for her to hold on to as she climbed higher on the oak than she typically would've dared had he not been there.

"Sirius," she gasped out in a thoroughly wonderstruck tone. Her eyes were wide as she took in the aerial view of the sun that was bleeding out on the horizon right before her very eyes. "It's _beautiful_."

"It is," he agreed but he was looking at her and not the fiery dusk of day. "Happy birthday, Narcissa."

(He was only nine and much too young to be promising the world and forever to a girl like her.)

**ii. **_I just knew too much._

"How much trouble did you get in?" he questioned, eyes gleaming in anticipation of her answer. He'd been trying to make her his partner-in-crime for quite some time now, but she didn't seem to want to take part in his devious schemes.

She pouted. "Loads. It's not fair, Sirius - your parents are so much nicer to you just because you're a _boy_."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Narcissa arched a blonde eyebrow. "You can't be serious."

He made a big production of looking himself over. "But I am," he said cheekily

She shook her head slightly, an unamused expression on her eleven-year-old face. "You couldn't possibly understand." Narcissa fidgeted with the muddied hem of her birthday dress that had been brand-new this morning. "Save me a seat on the train tomorrow?"

"Of course."

She nodded sagely in response and then left Grimmauld Place's parlour with her family as they Flooed back to Chateau de Noir. Sirius noticed that she had left something behind, though; it was a scarlet letter dated four years into the future. The swirly engraved lettering and the heavy weight of the paper let Sirius know that he was holding Narcissa Black's wedding invitation. The spot where her betrothed's name should have been was blank, but Sirius' name had been penciled in a calligraphy that he could clearly distinguish as hers.

He thought she had been arguing with her parents about what House she was going to be Sorted into tomorrow (Narcissa might've not-so-subtly mentioned her newfound preference to crimson-and-gold) but the wedding invitation was proof that perhaps the row had been about something a little more... _Sirius_.

He didn't know what to make of this revelation.

**iii. **_You really think you're in control?_

"I need to know," he belligerently demanded the next time they saw each other. It just so happened to be in the middle of the Great Hall, but Sirius paid no attention to the nosy audience gathering around him and his cousin. "Was that your father's idea or yours to put my name on the wedding invitation? Because I know our fathers have always joked about us falling in love but this is the twentieth century, Cissa. Arranged marriages and family incest are traditions of the past - what do you say to us rebelling against society and shoving it up their conceited arses - "

First, her eyes had been liquid azure, watery and filled with hurt. However, as Sirius continued speaking, Narcissa forced herself to freeze her facial features into an icy, glacial expression filled with scorn, pity, and contempt.

"It was an honest mistake, Black," she drawled out noncommittally before the rumours could fly that she was madly in love with her cousin (which was true, but it could be detrimental to her purely Slytherin reputation at school). "Don't be ridiculous. It would never work out between us. Every girl here knows just how rubbish you are at relationships."

He's shaking as if there were a maelstrom of strong winds creating a tornado inside of his ribcage, and he wore this disappointed expression on his face like he was only now noticing how cruel and serpentine she could be.

Sirius had thought she loved and would do anything for him, but one doesn't humiliate and destroy the person they love.

**iv. **_I can die when I'm done._

"What are we doing out here?" a seventeen-year-old girl with an ice queen's eyes asked. She was much too old to be dreaming of happily ever afters with a tree-climbing boy who will never love her back.

"Shh," the Sirius boy smirked with his lips curled up into a liar's smile. He started walking backwards to the cliff's edge.

Her apathetic facade fell away the moment Narcissa realised what Sirius was planning to do. "You're crazy, Black!" she screamed but the wind tore the words out of her mouth. "Have you lost your mind?"

He laughed, a grating sound that echoed and swelled into the open sky as it morphed into a scream. "Come here, Cissa."

"My name is _Nar_cissa," she corrected him frostily as she stalked over to him. "What do you want?"

"You," he said plainly.

She frowned at the pungently acrimonious scent of whiskey on his breath. "You're drunk, Black. Go home; you're not thinking straight." She tried to step away from him and his corrosive lies but he had other plans.

"I'm going to teach you how to fly."

"What?" she whispered because they were teetering on the precipice of the cliff now, right before the free-fall into nothing. She had thought she was invincible and immune to such trivial things in life such as death but she was about to be proven wrong.

Sirius' answer was a ghost of a smile as he leapt for the sky with her tucked safely in his arms. He may not have loved her the way she wanted to be loved, but the small amount he did give to Narcissa was enough to satisfy her.

(They fell to their deaths together that summer, the way a star falls from the heavens. The papers never mentioned that it wasn't an accident or that the two purebloods had been flying and not falling. It's rather peculiar how people never seem to write in the parts of the story that actually matter.)

[-]


	6. (september)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer: anything recognisable is not mine.  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "September (Earth, Wind, Fire) / Hermione&Viktor" ; Disney Character Competition "Prince Eric" ; Hedly Song Challenge "For the Nights I Can't Remember" ; and more challenges/comps.

I don't have the GoF order of events memorised, so I'm sorry if some events do not fall into the canon timeline.

22 April 2014. Word Count:

**(She always returned back to him.)  
**

* * *

**September  
**

[-]

**i. September.**_  
_

They met on the first night of September in a great big hall in a great big castle where magic and sorcery were taught. She was just a small-town girl living in a lonely world and who'd took a midnight train heading towards a world filled with dragons and broomsticks. He was just a city boy who was used to being surrounded by a sea of strangers that never seemed to deem him important enough to remember his name.

Her first moments inside of the castle were so beautiful and overwhelming that she could hardly remember anything besides the floating candlesticks and the professors lined up ever-so intimidatingly at the front of the Great Hall. She gazed around with stars swimming in her eyes as she absorbed the magic radiating in the atmosphere.

Everything was a blur of satiny black robes and velvet smiles when Beauxbatons and Durmstrang made their musically grand entrances. Faces of strangers that had not yet been named twirled past her in a dizzying circular dance.

("Who's that?" she had asked Ron during Durmstrang's introduction. She was pointing in the direction of a strong and silent Bulgarian with tall, dark, and handsome features. "That's Viktor Krum," the starstruck ginger-haired adolescent replied immediately, his heart rate increasing exponentially just because he was caught in the radius of the older boy's celebrity status. "He's only _the_ best Seeker the world has ever been graced with." Hermione nodded to herself. "_Viktor_," she whispered, head tilted slightly to the right as she studied him appreciatively from afar.)

**ii. October.**

There was this clumsy bookish girl Viktor remembered seeing at the Welcome Feast. She blushed much too easily and laughed a little too loud. She spilled pumpkin juice into the laps of her friends and apologised profusely for her never-ending string of accidents. The words she spoke were bigger than what her mouth could handle, and so she sometimes spoke with a slight stutter in her haste to convey her grandiose thoughts.

He was charmed by her from the very start.

**iii. November.**

"Oh! Hello, there!" she said breathlessly after ricocheting off of his muscles. She'd been mildly stupid and was walking around the castle corridors with her nose stuck in a book when her path was suddenly blocked by a very firm, muscle-y object.

"I fought a dragon for you," were his first words to this beautiful, oblivious girl.

"Did you, n-now?" she responded with an arched eyebrow. "And I suppose you expect me to fall in love with you just b-b-because you saved my life that I didn't even realise needed to be saved?"

He nodded because what else was he supposed to do?

"You don't even know my name," she said flatly.

"You don't know mine," he retorted back smugly.

"Er, did you forget that you happen to be an internationally f-famous Quidditch player?"

Viktor's smirk slowly straightened out. "Oh, yeah."

She laughed her loud laugh and the sound echoed in the empty space that hugged their skin. "Thank you, I guess. For saving me."

"My pleasure. I vould do it again in a heartbeat."

(He kept his promise a few days later when he rescued her from the bottom of a lake. "I'm the one person you care most about?" she asked once they were back on dry land. Her tone was confusedly for they had only spoken their first true conversation three days earlier. Viktor shrugged and responded with: "Vill you go to the Yule Ball vith me?")

**iv. December.**

She was awkward and he was too, but that was all right with the two of them because when they were together the world's opinions and judgments no longer existed. Hermione emerged briefly from her chrysalis and spread her butterfly wings at the Yule Ball that December night. She had her staircase moment and a Cinderella transformation. It was everything she had ever wanted and yet it was also so much more.

He held her in his arms and clasped her fingers so that they were palm-to-palm. Their pulses synchronised until their hearts were speaking the same language to one another.

_Do you love me?_ his asked. _Because I love you_.

Her heart skipped a beat and fluttered away before returning back to him. _Love is here to stay_, she replied.

(She always returned back to him.)

[-]


	7. (cowboy casanova)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer:  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Cowboy Casanova (Carrie Underwood) / Ginny&Draco" ; Disney Character Competition "Cheshire Cat"

23 April 2014. Word Count:

**"I hope you die of dragon egg poisiong today."  
**

* * *

**Cowboy Casanova  
**

[-]

"Weasley," he sneered, blocking the narrow aisle in the bookshop.

"Malfoy," she responded back curtly to the twelve-year-old blond. Ginny stepped away from him as if he were tainted with a contagious disease. "I hope you die of dragon egg poisoning, today."

"Back at you, Weaselette."

She stalked away from him with a self-important huff, never realising that her shopping cauldron was one book fuller than originally intended.

x

"SLYTHERIN!" the Sorting Hat hissed out, and the green-and-silver table exploded into a confetti burst of applause.

She rolled her eyes as the arrogant heir of some-important-pureblooded-family joined the snakes. From across the hall in the lions' territory, her family smiled up at her encouragingly with their rosy cheeks and golden freckles. Ginny knew they meant well, but for some reason her stomach felt a little queasy as she looked over at their shining faces.

Was it just her imagination or did they seem a bit predatory all of the sudden?

x

"It must've been a mistake," Percy said the next morning at breakfast. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince her. All of her brothers at Hogwarts had come over to the table to stage an intervention, but she wished they would all just go away.

"Yeah," Ron interjected in ever-so-helpfully. "There's no way you could be a Slytherin, Ginny."

The twins eye each other dubiously. "She's rather devious," they hedged and inspected her as if they were seeing her for the first time. "Some of our best pranks were all thanks to her."

"_She's_ sitting right here," Draco Malfoy drawled out from a few seats down. Ginny shot him a look - he would have been the last one she'd figured who would help her out of her family's smothering - but he countered his good deed with his typical tactlessness. "And she's using up all of Slytherin's oxygen. Feel free to take her away at any time, but please, get your weasel genes away from Slytherin. I'm feeling a wee bit poorer already."

"I hate you," she told him acidly as her brothers grumbled and shuffled away from the Slytherin table.

"Tell me something I don't know," he shrugged and then went back to eating his scrambled eggs.

x

None of the Slytherins liked her, but then again, she didn't really make an effort to like them. Her family had stopped talking to her and were acting as if she did not exist. In fact, the only one who _did_ converse with her was Malfoy. Granted, it was more immature death threats and a few hexes and curses, but at least it was _something_.

However, Ginny yearned for someone to appreciate her (not belittle her at every chance they had), and so she started to talk to a diary.

x

He, of course, didn't like that her attention had been diverted away from him only to be directed at a dusty, musty old book instead. So, being a desperate adolescent, he stole her diary. Ginny stormed up to him spitting fire and acid in the Common Room and demanded it back, but he laughed and paid her no mind. Draco opened up the book to try to peek at her deepest, darkest secrets. To his surprise, it was blank inside.

"Give it _back_," she hissed.

"I don't have it," he lied. It was currently wedged underneath the sofa cushion and out of plain sight.

She avoided looking into his bluey-grey eyes as if he were a basilisk who could kill her with his (fabulously handsome) looks. "Malfoy. Give it."

He held up his hands palm-face up. "I don't have it," he reiterated.

She rolled her eyes. "Fine. I guess you want to do this the hard way." Ginny procured her wand and exclaimed: "_Accio_ diary!"

Draco's eyes widened and he pressed down further on the sofa cushion he was sitting on. Unfortunately, the book was furiously wriggling to get free.

"Aha!" she yelled triumphantly and reached underneath his bum to retrieve her diary.

"Ah_h - Merlin - _stop molesting me!"

"If you would - just - _cooperate_ - none of this would - have - occurred!"

x

"Weasley," he sneered at her in the corridor.

"Malfoy," she responded back curtly to the twelve-year-old blond. Ginny stepped away from Draco as if he were tainted with a contagious disease, but for some reason she never seemed to be able to rid herself of him. "I hope you die of spattergroit, today."

"Back at you, Weaselette."

She stalked away from him with a self-important huff, diary tucked firmly beneath her arm. Ginny ducked into the girls' lavatory, quill ready to detail to Tom of her latest run-in with Malfoy.

[-]


	8. (let it be)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer:  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Let it Be (The Beatles) / Winky&Dobby"

23 April 2014. Word Count:

**"You want to die?"  
**

* * *

**Let it Be  
**

[-]

"I want to help," he told her as he prepared dinner for the children. "I feel so useless stuck down here away from the battlefield."

She smiled sadly, gave him a quick squeeze, and shifted to peer at the sizzling pans that were frying chicken on the stove tops. Food had to be rationed under Headmaster Snape's rule, but the Hogwarts house elves were trying to make the best of their situation and limited materials.

"I should be fighting and spying and saving Harry Potter from grave danger!" The little house elf let out a passionate _huzzah!_ and fist-pumped the air. Slowly, though, his ears drooped. "But Harry Potter told me to never save him again."

"Dobby, you _are_ helping out with the war effort, though," Winky told him. "You're helping to keep the students safe at Hogwarts. They are well protected and nourished in our care."

"I could be doing so much _more_," he sighed forlornly.

"And you could be doing a lot less," Winky stated. "But you aren't, and I think that says plenty about your character."

He mumbled something and absentmindedly rotated the chicken in the pan so that it would crisp up to a nice golden brown all over. "I'm a fighter, Winky. Not someone who likes to be on the sidelines."

"You want to die?" she asked sharply, horrified at the thought of a world without Dobby.

"Well, not _die_, per say. But I want my life to have meaning. I want to leave a mark in this world and be known for _something_." He started adding in spices and seasoning to the marinated chicken. "Winky," he said suddenly. "Winky, I don't want to be replaceable anymore."

"Replaceable?"

"Interchangeable? Exchangeable? The Malfoys acquired a new house elf after Harry Potter freed me. They had no need of me; I was as good as any other house elf to them. But if Harry Potter were to die, everything about this world would be different. The Dark Lord would have won. We'd all be replaceable. I want to be a Harry Potter, Winky. I want to be needed." He smiled at a fantasy vision only he could see and left the Hogwarts kitchens with an air of satisfaction about him as he carried platters of food to be hand-delivered to the children.

The double-doors swung shut after his departure, muffling Winky's words: "_I_ need you. Isn't that enough to make you want to stay?"

[-]


	9. (radioactive)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer: apocalypse!AU.  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Radioactive (Imagine Dragons) / Scorpius&LilyLuna" ; Off the Block Competition "Backstroke: Easy"

23 April 2014. Word Count:

**What was going to happen next? Zombies falling down from the sky?  
**

* * *

**Radioactive  
**

[-]

I can't really remember what I had expected to see when I'd dared to open my eyes, but I can assure you, this was not it. I'd seen the same scene millions of times before on the big screen Daddy had installed in Grimmauld Place, so experiencing it right now this very minute was just so . . . surreal. The eerie, abandoned quiet was something any native Londoner yearned for but never dreamt could happen.

As I walked down Tottingham Court Road, I still could not yet comprehend what was going on. No people, no moving automobiles, no sign of life . . . it was almost unbearably cliché. What was going to happen next? Zombies falling down from the sky?

Merlin, talk about the sky. Last I remember, I'd been stuck in a WWII bomb shelter to avoid the latest threats of the neo-Death-Eaters, so I had no clue what was going on up on Earth's surface. Suddenly there was this big _boomboomboom_ like the sky was falling or something, and the cellar shook until all I could breathe in were dust and ashes.

When I had deemed it safe enough to merge, I found the world void of life and frozen in time. Craters had been dug into the Earth and were housing small fires in their pits. The Thames had been drained - _where did all of the water magically go?_ - and the atmosphere was shrouded in a cloak of chemically enhanced smog. Streets that had been too-crowded were now too-vacant.

I saw no one.

I kept thinking there had to be someone - there was always a someone; in the films, people surviving an apocalypse made good use of the buddy system - but as I wandered around London, no one answered my echoing questions of "hello?". There were no people, no bodies, no clues as to what exactly had happened. The Death Eaters must have been fast and effective with their specie annihilation.

There's blood and dirt painted on my skin. I looked like a French revolutionary donned in red and black. My throat was parched and the only food available would be all that had not perished in the supermarkets. I wanted to use my wand to do some magic and _scourgify _myself but I was afraid that the Death Eaters might have infiltrated the Ministry and were monitoring all uses of magic.

Daddy had muttered that the Death Eaters were growing restless and erratic. He and Ron were trying their hardest to round them all up and chuck them into Azkaban, but the slimy gits were well-camouflaged into the muggle world. Lately they had been bombing random parts of Britain; really, it was only a matter of days until they would have successfully targeted London.

And now here I am, in the wrong place at the wrong time. I sighed and continued on walking down towards Charing's Cross and then over to Piccadilly. There was still no sight of anyone.

Oh, Merlin, better not breathe in too deep. The air was positively foul and the chemicals burned on their way down to my lungs. My bones quaked with fatigue, and I was so ready to collapse. I wondered if Mum, Dad, James, and Albus were all right and alive, too. My feet changed their course path and started heading in the direction of Grimmauld Place.

It was supposed to be mid-summer, but it felt more like the beginning of autumn. The darkened sky made it hard to see if the Sun was still out there, but the rapidly dropping temperatures had me thinking that perhaps the Sun had exploded too.

How big was this radioactive explosion, anyway?

"Don't move!"

I was whirling towards the voice before I knew what they were saying. A boy-man about my age stood with his wand pointed straight at my heart.

"I said, _don't move_!"

Er, all right, then. I quickly categorised his features: a Londoner as well, white-blond hair, steely grey eyes. Wizard, obviously.

"You shouldn't point your twig at me," I said pleasantly. "That's not a very nice thing to do."

"Yeah, well, sorry for not reading the apocalypse book of manners beforehand." He didn't sound very apologetic. His wand was also still pointed at me threateningly. "My father will hear about this," he muttered underneath his breath.

Ugh, of _course_ a Malfoy would be the only other survival during the end of the world. Just to make sure it really is Scorpius, I said: "For all you know, I could be a Muggle."

His eyes widened momentarily before he schooled his features back into place. "But you're not. You can't be, if you know what they are."

"I'm just saying," I said. "You shouldn't point a wand at people you just meet."

He lowered it infinitesimally. "You're the first person I've met since the . . . whatever happened."

I furrowed my brows, a little taken aback. "Why do you say it like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you meant people as in dead _and_ alive."

The boy-man shrugged and rubbed his stubbly jaw. "Like I said, what_ever_." He looked around, wand _still_ pointed at me. "I lost track of time; how long has it been since, er, the end of the world?"

I subtly edged away from him. I was glad that I had met another survivor but I wasn't quite keen on his rude company. "Long enough that there should be more of us around."

"Muggles? Or magical folk?"

"Anyone." I reached a hand into my back pocket for my own wand so I could Apparate away if worse came to worst.

"Hey, I said _don't move! Accio _wand!" the boy-man yelled out.

I tried to catch my wand before it flew into his grasp but I was too slow. "Shit! Why'd you use magic?! Now they know where we are!"

"They? I thought you said we were the only ones out here!"

"Give it back!"

"Who's _they_?"

"Give it!"

The storm clouds started swirling like a whirlpool overhead. Merlin, this plot really was straight out of a horror film. Hooded figures in tattered robes drifted down from the other side of the vortex. The air got even colder.

"Dementors," he breathed out.

"Nice job, mate," I scowled. "We had, like, .000001 percent of a survival chance earlier. Now we have none. Zip. Zilch. Nada."

"Bloody hell."

"My sentiments exactly."

The dementors took their sweet time to come over to us. Boy-man looked over at me.

"Tell me your name?" he asked. "I want to know the name of the pretty girl I just unknowingly sentenced to death."

I huffed. "I can't be_lieve_ you're trying to flirt with me right when we're about to die."

"Please?"

My eyes darted upwards above his head where a dementor was hovering a little too close for comfort. "LilyLunaPotter," I rushed out with my last breath as the dementor swooped down. There's no time for a hasty _patronus_ or _protego_ to ward off of the soul-sucking.

Some people just can't be saved.

[-]


	10. (billie jean)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer: American muggle prom!AU. I guess that means it warrants an M-rating, huh?  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Billie Jean (Michael Jackson) / Draco&Astoria" ; fanfiction terms competition "pov"

23 April 2014. Word Count:

**Shh, pass it on.  
**

* * *

**Billie Jean  
**

[-]

Junior year, he took the homecoming queen to prom, did you know? They actually didn't go to homecoming together; oh no, that was Theodore Nott, legendary quarterback of Hogwarts High, who was crowned the king. But Draco stole the prom king crown away from Nott. It caused _quite_ the scandal. And s_urely_ you know who Draco is.

What do you mean you don't?

Wait, do you even go to school here?

x

Him? Yeah, that's Draco Malfoy, the student transfer from Durmstrang High. _I_ think he's dreamy. Blond hair, chiselled jaw, tall and silent. Astoria's so lucky. She _always_ gets the hot Prince Charming guys. It's not fair, honestly. Just because she's blessed with perfect DNA and looks like a Malibu Barbie she gets the whole world handed to her. God, what a lucky bitch. I would love to hate her but unfortunately she's so _nice_. Like, save-the-world-and-all-the-starving-puppies kind of nice.

(Bitch.)

x

Dude, that was not cool. He came out of nowhere and broke the golden couple apart. Dude, everyone knew that Astoria was Theo's. I think they've been going out since seventh grade? Who cares; point is, that Malfoy guy split them up. No one knows what exactly went on, but dude, one day Tori and Theo were like peanut butter and jelly and then the next day they were not. Malfoy showed up at Hogwarts in between those two days. You gotta believe that's a bit sketchy, man.

x

Damn, girl, look at her go! Malfoy's one fucking lucky bastard. Tori's tits look ready to pop out of her dress. I wanna motorboat through those. I swear, every head turned when she got on the dance floor. Girl got some rad dance moves. Fucking cleavage, man. And those fuck-me heels that make her legs go on for miles. It gets me every time, dude.

Hell fucking yeah, I'm gonna enter the grind train!

x

This prom blows. Why do I even come? What a waste of money. The DJ sucks, the food sucks, the punch is only good because Crabbe spiked it with some vodka early on, and the people are the same shitty asses I've grown up with my whole life. Except for that Draco Malfoy enigma. He's new.

I wonder if he's going to join in on the drama here at Hogwarts.

x

Let me tell you, signing up as head of Prom Committee is easily the worst decision in my high school career. Actually, it could be a tiebreaker with procrastinating on studying for my AP exams. Whatever. It's just, why do I put so much time and effort into making Hogwarts look like it has a shred of school spirit when the rest of the student body uses the night to spike the punch and have sex with people who could care less about having a "long-term relationship". And then they have to go and make bad decisions like figuring out who their designated driver is. Um, hello, your piss-drunk friend is _not_ a good candidate to be your DD. Honestly, people.

Oh, hey, did I just see Astoria and Draco sneak off with a hotel room card key?

x

Psst! Tori and Draco lost their virginity to each other on prom night. I heard her talking about it to Pansy in the girl's bathroom! Shh, pass it on.

x

Ehmagawd, like, he _totes_ broke her heart. Who the hell does that? Like, we all knew he was too good to be true. But what a fucking cliche, you know? Mysterious bad boy comes in and steals away the quintessential good girl - shut _up_, Lavender, of _course_ I know big words. Do I look stupid or something? - and then fucks with her before breaking her heart. Like, I thought that only happened in, like, the movies or something. I didn't think it was, like, forreal or anything.

Gawd, poor Tori. She looks like the shitty slut that she is, and now she doesn't even have Theo to be her fuck-buddy anymore. Sucks to be her.

x

Wait, _what?_ That rumour about Tori losing her virginity was a _lie_? OMG, I knew it! Marietta, come listen to what I found out about Astoria!

x

What the hell, man? Is Astoria like Mother Mary now? Who else can possibly be a virgin and pregnant at the same time? She claims the kid is Draco's. Oh, Jesus Christ, the Greengrasses are filing for a lawsuit against the Malfoys. Child support, and all that. Jesus. I am so glad I am not in Malfoy's shoes. Barely eighteen and they're goddamn parents already.

Holy shit, man.

x

Tori's been absent for so long now. She's about seven months pregnant. We should go send her a care package or something with toys and clothes for her newborn. That would be nice, don't you think? The whole school hates her now, but we could never hate our cheer captain, right, girls?

Right?

x

She won her lawsuit against Malfoy. Astoria has full custody of their baby. It's his all right - the hospital did a paternity test and everything. He looks like a dumbass for denying the kid was his. Anyone who isn't blind can see that little Scorp has Malfoy's eyes.

x

Thank God that class finally graduated and took Astoria Greengrass and Draco Malfoy with them. They put Hogwarts High in the _Daily Prophet_ weekly and gave the school negative publicity and an awful reputation. My school doesn't need such vulgar acts and ill-wishes going on between its students.

_Draco Dormiens Numquam Titillandus_, from here on out.

[-]


	11. (smile like you mean it)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer:  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Smile Like You Mean It (The Killers) / Cho&Ron"

24 April 2014. Word Count:

**"Maybe later."  
**

* * *

**Smile Like You Mean It  
**

[-]

"Cho?" he asks at the end of class, and the way he sounds awkward and slightly unsure of himself reminds you of another boy - a smiling one who was painted in striped black and gold - who always hesitated before talking to you.

"Not now, Ron," you mutter before dashing out of Flitwick's room so you may find solace in the lavatory Moaning Myrtle haunts. For some reason, Myrtle's bathroom is like entering a parallel universe, or rather, that in-between place from life to death. Through tear-blurred eyes, you catch the sight of an infinite amount of Cho's in the mirrors but never do you see a Cedric in the reflections with you.

x

You graduate Hogwarts, and it's lovely, and everyone is so proud of you, and they're all toasting you at your celebratory dinner with well-wishes and endless happiness. But you're not happy - you don't think you ever will be - because there's an empty seat to the right of your father. It was supposed to be occupied by a beautiful boy who promised you forever but _Cho, he's died_ and _Cho, he's not coming_. Cedric's parents are here. They smile at you sadly, but you have to look away because his father has Cedric's crooked smile on his face.

Your eye catches sight of the table next to you. It's filled with seven redheads and two parents, and you think to yourself that is what happiness looks like. He happens to glance up right when the sun filters through the window pane behind him. He's bathed in a fiery glow of amber, scarlet, crimson, red and it's all the wrong colours - gold, honey, copper, yellow used to light up your days - but it also looks so right. He leans in to speak with his mum - never breaking eye contact with you, in the meantime - and suddenly he is excusing himself from his table and plunking himself down in the vacant seat to the right of your father and across from you.

"Cho?" Ronald Weasley says with a quivering sunset smile, waiting for your reassurance that he belongs here at your table. His freckles are liquid sunshine, ready to be solidified into that never-ending smile of his.

"Maybe later," you tell him and avert your gaze.

[-]


	12. (last in love)

**Author's Note:****  
****Disclaimer: aaaaand DONE! :) warnings for alcohol consumption.  
**

Written for the Shipping Shuffle Competition "Last in Love (George Strait) / Hermione&Charlie" ; Off the Block Competition

1 May 2014. Word Count:

**Neither of them believe in love. **

* * *

**Last in Love  
**

[-]

He's ginger and spice and definitely not everything nice. There is metal studded into his ears and rebellion clawing at his soul.

She's cinnamon and toffee, lightly speckled with caffeine and energy. There is quicksand dragging at her work-weary bones and a barricade of skin blocking her from the rest of the world.

They are two strangers bound together by the invisible thread of mutual acquaintances, yet in the dark corners of the Hog's Head they accidentally find out their one commonality:

Neither of them believe in love.

x

Charlie Weasley is known as a notorious heart-breaker back in his home-away-from-home town in Romania. There's nothing romantic about lust, and he makes sure all the girls stupid enough to want an emotional relationship know that he is not offering anything to them on an emotional level. If he accidentally says "I love you", it's in the heat of the moment and are simply three words he expects for them to take lightly.

(In the morning, he pretends he does not see the mascara-stained tears rimming their Bambi eyes.)

Hermione's heard of him, of course. He's her ex-lover's older brother, and if that weren't scandalous enough, he'd had a tryst or two in the Gryffindor Girls' Dormitories with that Lavender Brown slag during her years at Hogwarts. Perhaps Hermione has heard more of him than she's ever wanted to.

They've grown up a bit since then. He certainly does not recognise her when she sits on the bar stool immediately to his right.

"Dragon Fire on the rocks," she orders primly. Her no-nonsense voice piques his attention and he shifts slightly to glance in her direction.

"Rough night?" he asks, voice gravelly from his one-too-many shots of firewhiskey previously imbibed before her arrival.

"Not your business," she snaps back and turns away.

He's undeterred, though, and raises a pierced eyebrow at her. "Aw, don't be like that, sugar."

Her wand is instantaneously pointed threateningly at his bits. "Bugger off or I'll hex you," she hisses. "Last warning, wanker."

(He swears that his racing heart is due to the firewhiskey. His sweaty palms are because of the faulty air conditioning, and the tremor in his voice is the bar's techno vibrating in his vocal chords. None of these symptoms are occurring because he's _attracted_ to this spitfire of a girl.

Oh Merlin, no, not at _all_.)

x

She falls into bed with a cigarette-stained smile on her lips and an unfamiliar stranger's kisses tucked into the curls and whorls of her hair.

It was Ron's birthday today.

It was Ron's birthday today last year and the year before that and the year before the last year before.

It was Ron's birthday when she first met his family and his adoring parents. She found out that maybe love does last forever.

It was Ron's birthday when he told he loved her for the very first time.

(She didn't know at the time it would be the very last time, too.)

It was Ron's birthday when she found him amidst a menage a trois. It was Ron's birthday when he confessed that he'd always preferred Lavender over her.

The clock on her nightstand changes its digital numbers until a new day shows up on its face.

Three-hundred-and-sixty-four more days until she has to relive the best (and worst) moments of her life yet again.

(Today - well, yesterday, now - she forgot to ring and wish him a happy birthday.)

x

The next (and final) time that they meet is at a happily-ever-after wedding many years later. (The wedding is Gabrielle's and Neville's, if anyone cares. No one besides Fleur and Molly seem overly sentimental, though.) Hermione is wearing buttercream lace with vanilla accents while he's sinfully sticky sweet in his black licorice-coloured suit.

"May I?" he asks, gesturing to the open chair beside her.

Hermione sighs but cannot think of a way to avoid him. "Hullo," she says glumly, eyes trained on another redheaded, freckled, and tactless boy at the wedding.

"He's not good enough for you," Charlie interjected suddenly, looking over at the oblivious Ron and Lavender, too.

"And you are?"

Charlie shrugged and said with a smirk: "I dunno. Why don't we find out?" He held out his hand and pulled her onto the dance floor. "But for now, just hold on to me and never let go."

[-]


End file.
